allAfrica.com: Southern Africa: The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park: A Model for Africa? (Page 1 of 3)

The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, spanning the borders of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, is the largest, and most ambitious effort in Africa to combine conservation, environmental protection, tourism and economic development. If successful, the Great Limpopo Park will be the world's largest game park, a huge 3.5 million hectare area incorporating what is today South Africa's Kruger National Park, Mozambique's Limpopo National Park and the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.

But the challenges are immense. The presidents of the three countries signed the treaty formally establishing this new super park in December 2002 and several kilometers of fencing between the Mozambican and South African side have been symbolically cut down. But the park itself will probably not expand to its full boundaries for at least five years.

Nonetheless, the new park is already being offered as a model for future development projects in Africa. "The park will open to the world the biggest ever animal kingdom, increasing foreign investment into the region and creating much-needed jobs for our people, further acting as a symbol of peace and unity for the African people", says Mohammed Valli Moosa, the South African Environment Minister. South Africa is actively promoting the establishment of several "peace parks" across frontiers in southern Africa.

The potential benefits of the new Transfrontier park for the wildlife population, for the people who live in the area and for the region as a whole are tremendous, agrees Eddie Koch, a director of Mafisa Research and Planning, a South African agency specializing in ecotourism.

But in an interview with allAfrica, Koch points out that before the Great Limpopo Park can become a model, the governments involved will have to overcome a series of serious obstacles: There is still no plan for how to deal with the 20,000 Mozambicans living within the existing borders of the park, the plans for economic development projects to benefit local communities have not been developed and the political turmoil in Zimbabwe is actively destroying the wildlife population that was to be preserved by this park.

When the three presidents signed the treaty formally establishing this park in December 2002, there was a lot of talk about the potential for economic development and the other great social benefits of the park. But from an ecological point of view is this huge park a good idea?

The theory is a good one from a number of ecological points of view. It massively expands the protected areas in southern Africa and converts small, fenced-in protected areas into large eco-systems. So that is, in theory, a good objective.

In particular, it makes a huge difference for the Kruger National Park in terms of elephant management. The Kruger Park is facing a massive dilemma currently: how to deal with a very quickly growing elephant population. Its elephant herd has grown from 7,000 to 11,000 over the last couple of years because Sanpark, the South African government conservation agency, about three years ago took a decision to stop culling.

They used to shoot a few hundred elephants a year in order to keep the population. It was a very, very controversial exercise. It involved an undoubted amount of cruelty to elephants, and the herds from which they were shot, and it was never scientifically proven that the figure of 7,000 was the correct population for Kruger. So there was a huge outcry and Sanpark decided to stop culling.

One reason for the Transfrontier Park was to expand the amount of range land for elephants. So that the elephants could in fact roam freely rather than reach a population size that would force the park authorities to take this very controversial practice to keep the population down.

But it sounds as if all that will achieve is to buy time. Won't the herd keep growing and eventually become too large even for this larger park?

This buys a couple of decades. In the meantime there are a whole set of other programs underway to deal with elephant population. It is a big problem for African protected areas, southern African protected areas in particular.

So there are definite advantages in ecological terms.

There are undoubted advantages in ecological terms. But remember that in fact this Transfrontier Park is not a reality. All that has happened is that a couple of kilometers of fencing have been taken down.

It is a symbolic gesture that the governments have taken, and a treaty has been signed. Even on the ecological side, there are massive sets of issues that need to be dealt with properly before the park can become a reality.

For example, there is a big and undecided issue about where to place the fence. If the fence between Kruger and Mozambique is going to come down, is there going to be another fence on the Mozambican side of the big park running down the Limpopo river? The western boundary of the new super park, the Transfrontier Park, is the Limpopo River in Mozambique, which is unfenced. On the ecological front there are huge problems with fencing because the animals, when the park is repopulated, will require access to that river. As of yet there is no answer about whether or not the park will be fenced, or left an open system.

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